The House(s) of Fran_mart

 We seem to have some nice flowers around the hacienda at the moment. A Magnolia flower earnt a pic with a mass of fallen stamens. All of those flowers were at the front of the house.  There are also some out the back.  These photos were actually taken to record the New Holland Honeyeaters! And stretching the meaning of "flowers" , but I wanted to record our first multiple fruit pick of tomatoes.  This year we are well endowed with Grosse Lissies!

 I have just discovered that we first looked at our place at Mallacoota on 11 November 2018, so 2 years ago on Wednesday.  This was followed by a second visit (down and back in a day) on the 19th when thins got serious. What has caused this is my remembering the very attractive flowering bush out the front.  This is a NSW Christmas Bush,  Ceratopetalum gummiferum  and is just hitting its straps again now.

The title is a neologism (I so claim) derived from Fall and Foliage. I have wondered a bit why Americans use "Fall" and the Poms stick with "Autumn".  It appears that Fall comes from an Old English (ie Nordic-based) word meaning to fall or drop.  Thus relates to leaves descending, which is sensible.  Autumn seems to be a direct take from French (although etymologists- linguistics answer to taxonomists - seem unable to prove that.  Why the US languages should have stuck with the old version of the name but the Poms have dropped that is a mystery. Whatever: here is some Falliage around Nerang Pool. On the evening of 4 May I was waiting for some friends and notice this bank of leaves under an oak tree.  By late morning on the 5th they had all vanished: was this the street sweeper or the brisk wind?  I found some few colourful trees in part of Glebe Park.  We visited Telopea Park in search of Falliage, but none was available.  Neith...

There have been a few cool mornings recently and the leaves of Inner North Canberra are beginning to change. There was a nice sunset again.  Unfortunately the cloud is I think mainly smoke from some appalling Habitat Reduction Burns in the National Park South of Canberra.

We have a few things to do in Canberra so headed up there on 13 April.   This was after an attractive, albeit low key sunrise. My first thought as we drove was to notice the rather heavy traffic coming in to Mallacoota - possibly the seafood Festival is a big attractor? The heavy traffic continued when we got to the Princes Highway with a lot of caravans being a notable contributor.  Nothing dramatic just a bit surprising.  I presume it is folk seizing the second half of the school holidays and the Easter/ANZAC Day weeks coming up. Getting on to Imlay Rd and the traffic dies away.  We saw 2 other moving vehicles in the 57 km.  No log trucks, possibly explained by: all the signs about smoke hazard; and the number of State Forest fire-fighting utes around Imlay Creek. I think a fair chunk of forest is about to be lit up.  According  to the RFS the plan is for 2,000 hectares to go up. The issue of Habitat Reduction Burns continued in...

This is NOT about culinary methods of dealing with Common Mynas.  Rather it is about the food chosen by a fair horde of Little Corellas on Parkes Way this afternoon. My count was 91 Little Corellas - and all were closely examined WRT length of bill.  Coming from Civic, the more obvious group were dining on what appears to be some form of hawthorn, forming a hedge between the road and Commonwealth Park.  I formed that identification of the food from looking at this photograph.  There was a large clump of Pyocanthus a little further up the road but the Corellas were showing no interest in that.  (Presumably Pied Currawongs will take on the task of spreading that weed  later in the season.) In the central reservation of the road a couple of smaller groups of Corellas were munching on the fallen fruits of (I think) Maple trees.  They seemed to be picking the seeds out of the fruit and leaving the spiky cases behind.